Feel free to jump around to any automations that interest you! I used a little SmartThings too so it’s not all Home Assistant. Smart Home Solver video showing these automations in action: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/naxlaZdnqJqtf3k.html Previous video explaining how I thought of these: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g6d2gLSF0pavaGw.html

3 months into HA. You've been amazing! Best help on KZfaq for HA IMO. Figure I'd throw an automation request I can't figure out. Sliding door when dog is let out, outside lights on with contact switch. easy. If door is open and closed again, turn light off (we let dog in). If door is not open and closed in timeframe (15 min), make announcement. possibly trigger scene (or light notification). if door is open / closed after announcement, turn off backyard lights / return house lights to previous state.

I used what you showed in this video to clean up many of my automations and create a few scripts that make app notifications and Alexa announcements much simpler.

Thanks for sharing. I do love how you go into such detail and do a great job explaining what you did. Look forward to seeing more as this channel develops. Happy New Year!

This was really helpful and there's a couple of new things I've learned to improve my automations. For time based automations controlling blinds or lights I find I nearly always use sunrise/sunset, or times offset from them. I'm pretty addicted to automations tbh. Thanks for these quality videos Reed.

Thank you for putting this video together. I am new to Home Assistant, and this video was the right level of detail to allow me to follow and setup my own garage lights routine. Works perfectly now. Thanks again for sharing your ideas.

This was a huge help setting up my first home assistant project (garage lights). Thank you so much!

your ideas are really cool! as soon as I have money and time I want to do it little by little in my house! thanks for your videos!

Thank you so much for this, great video! I will definitely be referencing several of these.

Great automations. Thanks Reed.

So I just found out about your second channel and was wondering how you did all of the automation. You are awesome Mr. R. Hope this 2023 is full of blessings for you and your family!! Keep up them videos

Some really good content, thanks for the guidance, I'll be implementing some of these.

Glad you have this channel up. Very helpful

The garage lights off helped me. So simple yet I overlooked it. Thanks man!

Thanks Reed, Im pretty excited for this second channel. I think im ready to graduate to home assistant lol hope you can do a video on setting up home assistant from the beginning

Hey Reed, Wishing you and the family a very happy new year for 2023 from the UK. I am loving the new channel and can already see how I could edit some of them to suit my own uses. It would be great if there was a place to download some of the YAML content for these. I am starting to explore HA more and more following a move, but am finding it a slow process. Anyway keep up the great work, I look forward to the new upcoming content. If ever you want a tester in the UK send me a message.

I had a similar setup for doing school runs for my daughter, but instead of disabling during holidays I created a Google calendar (would use the ha one if I was to do it now) with my daughter's holiday dates and used that as a condition paired with the workday sensor (to check mon-fri plus public/bank holidays) as a few times I forgot to turn it back on 🤣

Just set up the garage lights with the timer! 💥

I've got one more automation idea, that i use myself, for the bathroom. And you already have the correct lights for it! -IF dark_outside_bathroom AND entering_bathroom THEN nightlights -IF bright_outside_bathroom AND entering_bathroom THEN full_lights Hope it's not too confusing pseudo code. The idea is to turn on the lights in advance before entering the room, but based on illumination condition outside the room. Hence, if you wake up in the night and no lights are on as you like to preserve night vision, there is no bright flash when entering the room. Only light strips under cabinets are turned on at dimmed warmest setting. And then, if lights are on in the house, normal ceiling spots are lit. Tried red light also, but the feeling was a bit too much like "hunt for the red October". But looks good on camera!

Great tips. There is always a lot on info/tips/tricks in your video's. I'm still struggling with presence detection and everything associated with it. Can you do a complete run down of your complete setup of the presence detection, away modes, notifications, baby sitter mode, etc?

Hey Reed! Love the videos. I would be interested to learn how to set up the "futuristic automations" that you did previously a while back on your other channel. I think one of the automations was, you'd be sitting on the couch and the weather was nice so Alexa would ask if you wanted to "open the blinds?", then depending on your response, Alexa would act accordingly. My wife and I used to use shortcuts with Apple's HomeKit, but since the update to Matter we switched to Alexa smart speakers. I had a shortcut on my iPhone that went off every morning that would tell me the weather, date, rundown of my schedule, traffic, etc. After that, Siri would ask "would you like a cup of coffee?", if I said "yes" then she'd turn on the Kuerig by using my Switchbot device. Im still getting the hang of using Alexa the same way I was able to use shortcuts and would like to set up something similar with Alexa. Can you show how? Thanks in advance.

Those man colds will get us every time.

going back and watching some of these. i normally watch your main channel and im actually really surprised youre still using smartthings. i thought you had switched fully to home assistant (outside of alexa). is this just for devices that dont have support with home assistant, or do you use it for other reasons too? as an aside, you were one of the people using smartthings that convinced me to make the jump to home assistant, and i couldnt be happier. (paul hibbert was the other one. i thought "wow, if even he's advocating for home assistant now, it must have come a long way!")

Great, video. Please keepbposting more of how to set-up home Automation & Home Security ideas...loving the content. PS. Also, could ypu please make a video on How to link Ring Security with the Alexa App... I have been unsuccessful at doing this, therefore I have not been able to create Routines, thanks!

Even though it was a little bonus tip, the script you use for phone notifications and changing phones is brilliant. I have already dealt with changing phones and having to manually change all my automation notifications one by one, and it stinks. I just made a script like you showed and it's working brilliantly!

Reed you just made my garage light automation better thanks. I do have 2 questions since you did not mention it, on the lights off (garage) automation under actions, what is the "garage override" option? Why did you do 2 separate automations (on/off) instead combining it all into 1 using choose and ID's for example? Thanks and Happy New Year.

LOVE seeing this type of behind-the-scene stuff. Curious, I see you've got Node Red in the sidebar...do you use it for anything? I use it a good bit but frequently wonder if I'm just over complicating it when I could just use HA's native automations.

Good video, do you mind doing some more nfc helpful routines.

Hi Reed, cool automation ideas. I wanted to ask if you have smart outlets where you plug in your garage lights or how exactly do you control them? Same with the light strips on the bathroom. Thank you.

Wow, so many system to do automations and stuff. Crazy 😂

Oh dear. Man flu is the most evil thing. I am looking forward to getting my Swithcbot tilt motors that I ordered from the kick starter. They are due to arrive this week, which is pretty good considering I am in Australia. I hope you had a good NYE and Christmas/Holiday Season. Looking forward to seeing more of you in the new year.

Hi Reed! Love this video. I want to copy the Garage Lights routine as closely as possible. I am a new Home Assistant user and am stuck on how to add Ring Contact sensors. I use Ring as my security system so all of my Ring sensors are connected to my Ring Hub. I've added Ring as an integration in HA but all I have access to are the cameras. Would you love your thoughts on this. Thank you.

Hi Reed, would you be able to give deeper into how you setup up your alarm system to set itself when all phones are away? I understand, to some degree, how the notification works but I want to know how you created the automation in the first place and linked it into your system

Hello! I love your channels!!!!! I ‘m 19:55 trying to turn on my office fan at a given temperature. I ‘m not able. I saw in your videos that you had done it. Could you tell me how you solved it?

Well, love your work but the play music with motion sensor is missing a few things... 1) you can use the "music/podcast" feature which can then select a music provider AND 2) Give a DURATION TIMER for when the music stops! Your set up on this video does not mention if/when/how the music will STOP playing. THANKS AGAIN REED!

Bonjour Reed, for the reminder to pickup the kids, why don’t you add a calendar for the holidays and use it as a condition. You need to create a calendar (you need to create a false event to get the ics created) in HA for that and then to replace the existing .ics you’ve just created with the real one (don’t forget to copy and past the name before deleting).

Hi Reed. Great video. I wondered if you (or anyone reading this) would be able to explain how to get echo devices working in HA? I have them integrated and can see each of them as media players but can not get them to play anything. Just get a message that you need to set up TTS. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Hi Reed. I really like all your ideas for automations. I have a question about the various sensors you use. Does each one require it’s own hub? I’m trying to keep things simple buy using the built in ZigBee hub with Alexa and I don’t want to have to buy a separate hub each time. Could you maybe describe your hardware setup and what you might do differently to minimize the hubs you use? Or is using Only Alexa limiting me in some way? Thanks for all this information!

More of a fundamentals question - I see the light strips suggested, but how do you recommend setting up the light strips? What do I need to get for control and power to be neatly hidden/integrated?

Interesting channels Reed. Have you integrated voice commands into HA? e.g. Calling a Google hub routine for bedtime and triggering Spotify playlist to play for x minutes, checking doors etc. Google has a defect in their sleep timer I am looking for a way around it with some added functionality.

Unfortunately I have it right now. Been the worst 3 days of my life it feels like. Trust me I feel your pain. I hope y'all are getting to feel better now.

Instead of a script to send notifications, I would recommend setting up a notification group (or multiple for different phones that have different features). This way you can have your automations notify notify.android_phones and notify.iphones and just update the membership of those groups whenever phones get swapped. I believe this requires YAML but it's just a couple lines.

Reed, great setup using both SmartThings & HA. I’m a big user of ST’s, don’t know anything about HA but it seems to be gaining a lot of ground lately. Can I use my Zigbee & z wave devices with both ST’s and HA? Then I could slowly learn HA & start to migrate my devices to both or either. Thanks!

Hi Reed, thank you for that video. i spent a lot of time by watch, pause rewind many time your video and i'm wondering what's wrong with my setup. it is about playing music on my firetv when motion is trigger (i tested also with my echo show and the problem is still there). i test my alexa routine work (the "then" part) direct in amazon echo app and that work. i also test if my motion sensor is trigger if the automation said "now" in the last trigger time and yes it is. so now it should start my routine in my alexa app but that part does not work. So basicly HA detect teh motin detection and my routine work in amazon echo if it test on his side but together they dont play the song that i put in the routine. do you know what is my problem? Thanks and happy new years 🙂 service: media_player.play_media data: media_content_id: routine media_content_type: testmusic target: entity_id: media_player.fire_tv_salon_marie_rc enabled: true

What kind of door sensor did you use for the garage automation? My main question is how did you get it to poll so Instant without drastically draining batteries? Or is this a hard wired sensor?

Curious to why you use Wi-Fi switches instead of Shelly relays and Shelly dimmers?

Which brand of smart switch are you using for the garage? I really want to get that going.. Thanks

For the ring contact sensors to work with HA do you have to pay for ring's security service?

Can I suggest a tweak to your tesla automation? There is a HACS tesla integration that pulls the data from Tesla through the API, and by doing this It can remind you to charge only if the battery is below x % ?

With your garage lights, did you think of putting all the door sensors into a group and triggering from the group instead of each individual sensor? I am just curious if you had thought of that or there was a reason you didn't use it as a group.

Maybe I missed something, but for the motion music via Alexa, how do you get it to turn off at the end of the time window? With SmartThings there's an option to stop with a condition/time, but not with Alexa?

4:59 Using Alexa &|| SmartThings w/ Ring & Hue, is it possible to trigger a change in color when a contact sensor is opened, then return to the previous state. I’m essentially wanting to show which contact sensor was opened with a color change on a hue bulb

Hi Reed, or other experts here.. Question... We had to reset the Router. Do I have to reconnect all my smart plugs /bulbs individually again or is there an easier way ? Thanks in advance

Hello Reed, Hope all is well your way and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Sorry for this lengthy comment but I read it was best to contact you through commenting on a new posted video instead of emailing you. Here is my Issues at hand. Just finished building a new house that is approximately 6,000 ft. I am attempting to make it a fully integrated Smart Home I have approximately 150 Wiz can lights switches and sensors some Genie smart devices some cync light switches approximately 15 Eufy devices cameras, locks, and door sensors ring outdoor sensor lights and some Philips Hue bulbs Roku and Fire TV streaming devices Smart TV LG Smart appliances as well as GE smart washer and dryer a Chamberlain smart garage door opener and a smart geothermal heating cooling system I also have some wyze cameras and sensors as well as smart water leak detector. I have approximately 10 Google Assistant speakers throughout the house and a Eero pro 6 Mesh system. I also bought 1 Aeotec smart hub. All together I have approximately 250 smart devices. The question is should I switch to Alexa home assistant over google assistant due to the fact that I'm having issues integrating all devices and the mesh system is also and Alexa Smart Hub system and I cannot get my aeotec hub to connect to any wifi devices. No devices at this time are zigbee but the Hub says it will also integrate Wi-Fi devices but is not picking them up. The other question I have is what is the best way to integrate all these devices. Keep up the good work and I hope to hear back from you soon.

You show that you use an “all phones away” automation… can you explain how you do the device tracking piece? I’ve rewatched your video several times, but can’t quite figure out how you did that.

how did you config your iphone location, mine isnt reliable atm? gave HA location and background activity permission or?

how do you get home assistant on your watch?? can i get that on my fitbit?

I have an Alexa routine using my phone's location. When I arrive home at 6 pm or later, I have my kitchen and living room smart lights turn on for five minutes. It works, but the problem is that when I ask Alexa to turn either one on when I'm home, it will auto shut-off after five minutes because of the Alexa routine. I'm using Ring smart lights, so when I go into the Ring app and turn on the lights, I can change the five minute duration to stay on until I manually turn them off. It works, but when the routine runs again, it defaults back to the five minute duration. What action/step do I need to add to the routine to fix this? Thanks.

I'm trying to set up to have my garage lights turn on when I open my door but. I able to do this through Alexa? Or smart things? In smart things it can't find any of my ring devices too.

Can I install Home Automation on Synology NAS?

Have u started the day with sone bears?

Hi, I have a mydlink water sensor SCH-S161, is there a way to automate this device with Alexa? It says it is compatible with Google Assistant

It seems that you can use the Tesla app to schedule your charging? A lot less complicated.

That's too bad about the SwitchBot and Home Assistant. Those would have been an instant buy for me if they integrated easily. These automations are all very cool though.

Hi , I tried your script for phone notification incase i will switch my phone. I cant get this to work. I created a script using your code and change the name of my phone. I created an action with call service and then the script i created but i do not have service data section to had the message like you show in the video . any idea ?

The problem I have with timers is, like in your garage example, you walk back in and a short time later, the timer hits 0 and turns the lights off.

Do you have a smart coffee machine?

18:19 - I received an error about no default value set when creating your automation template (14:29) and modifying for my use case. In fairness, I did do some exploration on the HA forums and even though dated they gave me the same errors. The only thing that worked for me for a value template was: {% set last = state_attr('automation.lock_down_night_bed_time', 'last_triggered') %} {{ last is none or (now() - last).total_seconds() > 21600 }} The above will only trigger the automation every 6 hours, which isn't an issue because my time template is presently a 3 hour window. I know that you're super busy with familial responsibilities, and although I hope your template works for others (as I think you're a solid HA automation and KZfaq creator), but I am placing mine above in case anyone else has a similar complication. Stay safe, and I hope you don't get the awful weather in the valley that we are getting in the mountains. 😀

I really wish Home Assistant's Automation menus were intuitive. It's very complicated to learn what I need to do. Making the speakers TTL something between 6AM - 11PM, after every 3 hours once a button is pressed was more complex than I though it would be.

Thank you so much for the Garage Lights timer trick, this solved an issue I had. But for the lights off trigger, it looks over engineered. I just put the Timer as the trigger. I don't get why you have also the motion detectors and then 3 conditions here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/abWYaKtnrqyvmmw.html

What "home assistant" is this? google? ring? Apple? the computer software you are using